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Sunday, November 2, 2014

Orthodox Christianity in China - A comb worth fighting for

Christianity in China is experiencing
spectacular, but turbulent, growth; by one estimate, the number of
Chinese Christians could by 2030 have reached 250m—the largest Christian
population of any country in the world.

Unless something
extra-ordinary happens, only a tiny fraction (less than 0.1%) of those
Christians will be followers the eastern Orthodox church, which you
might have expected, on geographical grounds, to be the faith's
prevailing form. Why is it so relatively weak?

In part, perhaps, because
Chinese Orthodoxy's position has been affected by some arcane
jurisdictional disputes, which to outsiders can seem like bald men
fighting over a comb. On the other hand, China's Orthodox Christians
have a distinguished heritage and they may not have said their last
word.

The story is a feast for church history buffs. Despite the
Chinese authorities' strong aversion to religions with "foreign"
connections, Orthodoxy can stake a claim to legal existence in China
because it is the historic (though hardly practised) faith of two small
communities in northern China: the Albazinians who descend from Cossack
prisoners who settled in the 17th century; and the Evenks, a people who
straddle the Chinese-Siberian frontier.

A bit closer to present reality, Orthodoxy flourished among the tens of thousands of White Russian émigrés,
and a few Chinese converts, who lived in Harbin and Shanghai in the
1930s.

From 1934 onwards, their spiritual leader was an eccentric but
gifted Russian archbishop, Ioann Maximovich, who was credited with
extraordinary powers of healing and clairvoyance. In 1949, after the
communist takeover, he led about 5,000 of his flock to the Philippines
and then to the United States. A short, bedraggled figure in shabby
robes, he lobbied Capitol Hill and somehow persuaded startled
legislators to grant his followers asylum.

Whatever
remained of the Russian Orthodox presence in China—which had begun with a
spiritual mission established by Emperor Peter the Great—was virtually
destroyed in the Cultural Revolution. These days the only place in
mainland China where Russian services are regularly held is a recently
rebuilt church in the country's embassy in Beijing.

Services happen much
less often at a restored church in Shanghai (pictured above) and there
are small, priest-less communities scattered through other parts of
China. One Orthodox resident of Beijing told me he knew of about two
dozen Chinese converts to Orthodoxy; they were usually people who had
switched from evangelical Christianity or Catholicism after a deep study
of Christian history. By some estimates the total number of Orthodox
Christians in China is between 10,000 and 15,000.

In May
last year, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow visited China and met President
Xi Jinping; but these stratospheric connections didn't immediately
change the fact that not a single Chinese Orthodox priest functions in
mainland China. The only ray of light comes from the fact that a handful
of Chinese students have been allowed to study in Russian seminaries.
They may eventually return to their homeland to serve as priests.

Hong
Kong, with its more liberal regime, is a different story. In 1996, a
few months before Britain handed the territory back to China, an Orthodox mission
was established there by the Istanbul-based Ecumenical Patriarch, who
by tradition enjoys primacy among the world's Orthodox bishops (although
the precise nature of that primacy is disputed). As the Ecumenical
Patriarchate sees things, it was empowered by the Council of Chalcedon
in 451 to be the main church authority in places outside the
historically defined Christian lands (ie, places like China).

In such
countries, it argues, it should be the principal Orthodox Christian
institution whose permission is required for any other Orthodox church
to function. In that spirit the Hong Kong mission claims authority over
Orthodoxy in China and south-east Asia.

The Russians reject this interpretation of Chalcedon, and they have established their own mission
in Hong Kong. So a city of 7m people is served by two modestly
flourishing but tiny Orthodox Christian organisations, operating in
rivalry rather than synergy—competing not so much to win converts as to
fly an institutional flag. It's not a happy or dignified situation.

Doubtless
some of the country's hard-pressed Orthodox would give the proper pious
retort: they are resting their hopes not so much on earthly
institutions as on the invisible presence of saints and martyrs from
previous generations.

And today might be a good day for them to invoke
the help of Archbishop Maximovich. He had a particular aversion to the
idea of Christians celebrating Hallowe'en which he saw as a festival of
darkness. Indeed, he once gate-crashed a Hallowe'en ball which some of
his parishioners were attending, and shamed the band into ceasing its
music.